re: short-term sheikh has some long-term history
Yep this guy was an illegal immagrant who was supposed to be deported but the labor party stopped it to placate the ethnic vote before the 87 election, he is also a convicted antique smuggler. gee thanks labor. Short-term sheikh has some long-term history Date: 27/10/2001
By Alan Ramsey
Sheikh Taj el-Din Al Hilaly, spiritual leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims and one of the country's most contentious religious figures, accuses John Howard and government policy of having "opened the gates of death" to the 300-plus asylum seekers, mostly Iraqis, who drowned off Indonesia a week ago. Philip Ruddock, Howard's stoic Immigration Minister, has his own strong views about the sheikh, just as Australia's Jewish community has had for some years.
Eleven years ago, as opposition spokesman on immigration, Ruddock pursued questions, never answered, on the detail of how and why the Hawke Labor government eventually granted Hilaly permanent residency in 1990. Eight years earlier, in February 1982, the sheikh had arrived in Sydney from Egypt, under the sponsorship of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, on a three-month visa.
He and his family never left.
Over the next seven years the Hilaly family stayed here on a succession of visa renewals, despite moves by Labor's immigration minister, Chris Hurford, to expel the sheikh in June 1986 after a series of incidents involving statements condemned as "incitement to racial hatred". Hilaly, supported by strong NSW and federal ALP lobbying, survived Hurford's decision. Two years later, in October 1988, the Coalition demanded his visa be withdrawn after a series of "virulent" anti-Semitic comments were attributed to a speech he made at a University of Sydney seminar of Muslim students.
Among these comments, subsequently published in a Jewish newspaper, was a reference to Jews as "the underlying cause of all wars" who "use sex and abominable acts of buggery to control the world". The Liberals' Alan Cadman, at the time immigration spokesman, called on Robert Ray, Hurford's Labor successor in 1987 as immigration minister, to "terminate" the sheikh's visa "as soon as possible".
Cadman commented: "Many commitments have been made that political statements [by the sheikh] likely to engender hostility would not be made. Those commitments have not been observed." Cadman claimed Hurford's 1986 deportation order had been revoked only to placate Sydney's Islamic community in the run-up to the July 1987 election. "Frankly, I think the Labor Party has jeopardised the national wellbeing for short-term political gain."
In 1989 an application by Hilaly for permanent residency was deferred by Ray after the intervention of Paul Keating, then treasurer, and his NSW colleague, Leo McLeay, at the time house speaker. Privately, the sheikh had travelled to Canberra for a meeting with McLeay and Keating. When Ray learnt of it, he deferred the sheikh's application for a year on the grounds of collusion. Keating would not speak to Ray for months.
Publicly, Ray announced, in September 1989: "Key issues in considering the application involve allegations against Imam Hilaly that: (1) he was a divisive influence in the Lebanese community; (2) he made a racist and inflammatory attack on Jews; and (3) he is associated with the Libyan regime. I concluded there was some evidence of the first, overwhelming evidence of the second, and insubstantial evidence of the third ... When considering his disgraceful attack on Jews, consideration was also given to his subsequent retraction."
Ray extended Hilaly's "temporary entry permit" another year to "test his commitment to play a positive role" in promoting religious harmony. The following year, after the 1990 election, Ray became defence minister and Gerry Hand, the new immigration minister, subsequently approved the sheikh's permanent residency. By then, the Liberals' musical chairs had seen John Howard ousted as leader, Andrew Peacock lose another election and John Hewson replace the pair of them.
And Ruddock, whom Howard had dumped as immigration spokesman in 1985, made a return to his old job after Peacock's coup in May 1989. For the next four years Ruddock remained the opposition spokesman on immigration, a job he got for real after the Coalition, with Howard back in the leadership, thumped the Keating government in March 1996.
Ruddock, therefore, has been on the Coalition frontbench now five months into his 13th year. A full 9 of those years have been involved with immigration and ethnic affairs. And in September 1990, when Hand approved Hilaly's permanent residence, Ruddock sought, under Freedom of Information, "all briefings and advisings" in the "grant of residence status" to Hilaly and his family. "The minister must be able to justify the decision," Ruddock said.
Hand ignored him. No reasons were ever made public.
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